Part of me was thinking, why not wait another short while until she ties or breaks Ingemar Stenmark's record. But, really, why? Absent some catastrophic event, she will smash his record and keep going.
Do you even know who she is? Even the U.S. media mostly ignores her. I'm a World Cup ski racing fan for a while, but never so much as since she has been racing. To use an adjective for her like marvelous or incredible is just not enough. My title is that she's the greatest athlete in the world right now, probably has for some years, and sticking with it.
Leave aside that if she skis a few more years, she may put the record out of reach for generations. No one who is skiing these days is even remotely close to her. Laura Gut-Behrami has 36 golds lifetime. Petra Vhlova, Mikaela's other biggest competitor, has 27. 85-36-27. Mikaela had 11 golds in World Cup skiing this year, so far, with a couple of months to go. Petra Vhlova, an awesome skiier herself, is number two overall this year but behind by an insurmountable margin. She has one gold this year. Just one. The skier closest in golds this year to Mikaela has 4. 11 to 4. In the men's division, Mikaela's boyfriend, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde and Marco Odermatt both have 7. But, that's normal for most top skiers of the year. Mikaela has a number of times gone over 10 wins. One year Mikaela had 17 victories, something no one else male or female has ever approached. She is next in line herself with 14 (tied with Vreni Schneider).
Mostly ski fans just pay attention to who has the most wins. But, consider this. Mikaela's win record is 35.42%. She wins more than one third of all the races she is in. In skiing, where even the best of them can ski off course in a fraction of a second and where she has awesome competition every race, including races that are not in her specialty (which is slalom), that is incredible. To compare, Lindsay Vonn, easily the second greatest women skier ever had a 20.8% win record. By analogy, it's like what Babe Ruth did when he started shattering home run records. I pulled these off of: The ski world, and beyond, reacts to Mikaela Shiffrin’s record-breaking accomplishments (teamusa.org).
Mikaela is the only skier, male or female to have won all six alpine disciplines: Slalom, parallel slalom (where you run multiple races against opponents), Giant Slalom, Super Giant Slalom, Downhill and Combined (Downhill and Slalom).
She has many other records (e.g., most ever in one discipline) and was the youngest to win any number of events and records, too many for me to want to track down. I'm just celebrating her.
Ironically, though she had a bad Olympics in 2022 and for some people, who don't watch World Cup racing, that is what is most important (it's not so much by the racers or fans), she is actually tied for the winningest American Olympic Skier of all time with 2 golds (and she has a silver) and is the youngest ever slalom Olympic champion amongst everyone. She has not had a great Olympic record only for her because expectations were insane - anyone else would be overjoyed. Lindsay Vonn had only one gold and one bronze. Marcel Hirsher of Austria, who retired a couple of years ago much younger than people expected but was also the best male skier of his generation, had the same three Olympic medals as Mikaela and Ingemar Stenmark, had slightly less, 2 golds and one bronze. Though there are skiers with better Olympic records, and they are great skiers themselves, no one puts them in the same class as the four just named. My point is, she did great in the Olympics, but it is not really what counts in the ski world any more than it is in many sports, like basketball or boxing.
There are other records to be broken and she may end up with many of them. But, skiing is a very difficult sport and she may injure herself or lose her drive, as some others have done. We will see. Right now, I'd say she is the greatest athlete living still competing (I would put Simone Biles in her class before she retired) and probably the greatest alpine skier, male or female, ever.
Okay, I'm done. Happy if you just know her name now.
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